Race

Somebody Explain To Roseanne Barr What A Double Standard Is

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

I guess I should start off by admitting that I have never found Roseanne Barr sufficiently witty, original or entertaining to make up for the ugliness of her world view, her horrible nasal screech, and her unjustified belief in her own brilliance.

I never could stand her hit sitcom or sit through an entire episode, so the reboot was about as welcome to me as most reboots (like the sad zombie version of “Murphy Brown”), but even a little less. When she managed to get herself fired and transformed into a pariah for making a racist slur against Barack Obama’s top advisor (and Michelle’s pal) Valerie Jarrett, tweeting in 2018 that Jarrett was the offspring of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Planet of the Apes movies, I didn’t feel sorry for her. The tweet was racist, and it was a mark of Barr’s arrogance, built up over years of being excessively praised and rewarded for being “outrageous”—I file her in the same general category as similarly unfunny shock-jocks like Howard Stern—that no ethics alarms went off when she thought it would be hilarious to compare an Obama staffer to a monkey. It was also stunningly stupid. From my ethicist perspective, Barr made the offense worse by claiming that she had no idea that Jarrett was black. Sure, Roseanne. Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: “‘What’s Going On Here?’ Why Does Disney Think It Is Appropriate To Produce And Circulate Abrasive, Divisive, Confrontational Interest Group Propaganda And Indoctrination Like This?”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

I have a confession to make. I know that the ethical and moral deterioration of the Disney corporation is a major ethics catastrophe with dire consequences for our society and culture, and Ethics Alarms should have been covering it more thoroughly. It hasn’t, and that’s because this topic is particularly painful for me.

I owe so much to Disney’s creations and philosophy. I learned a lot of ethics from the shows and movies growing up, and many of my most enduring and important interests and hobbies were inspired by Walt’s vision. My fascination with dinosaurs began with the terrifying T-Rex sequence in “The Rite of Spring” segment of “Fantasia,” for example. My reverence for the Alamo was inspired by Disney’s “Davy Crockett” series. The first dramatic production of any kind that genuinely move me was “Bambi.” I never got to visit a Disney theme park until college, but finally going to Disneyland after dreaming about it as a kid was one of the epiphanal experiences of my entire life: it was perhaps the only time something I had looked forward to was even better than I expected it to be. Disney’s perfectionism—at the parks, which were immaculate and overlooked no detail to immerse visitors in the fantasy, and in the TV shows and movies—influenced my own view of professionalism and my approach to directing for the stage. His courage and certitude in pursuing risky creative projects that everyone was telling him were doomed to fail—a full length animated film?—bolstered my own resolve when I have had project ideas that seemed nuts to everyone but me.

(And some were nuts, as it turned out. But the times I was right more than made up for those.)

I could go on, but I won’t. The point is that attacking Disney for me is like savaging a childhood hero, or even a parent. But the country, its culture and mental health is being harmed by the current distortion of Walt’s creation’s destructive alliance with the radical Left. It deserves to be attacked, and it’s time I got down to it.

This Comment of the Day (actually two comments, in sequence) by jmv0405 on the depressing post yesterday on a Disney Critical Race Theory video, makes up for some of that lost time by getting the discussion jump-started. It is also a perceptive and illuminating perspective that I wouldn’t have seen without the comment’s guidance. Continue reading →

“What’s Going On Here?” Why Does Disney Think It Is Appropriate To Produce And Circulate Abrasive, Divisive, Confrontational Interest Group Propaganda And Indoctrination Like This?

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

Anyone?

I don’t like being shouted at by cartoon characters. Even if they had a valid point, my response to this kind of assaultive advocacy is, has ever been, and always will be…

Bite me.

Plumbing The Depths Of The Great Stupid: I Usually Don’t Continue Reading Articles That Start With First Sentences Like This One, Missing Out On Hilarious Race-Obsessed Delusions…

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Before we delve into the substance of the article at issue, let me express my gratitude to author David Kaufman for giving me another opportunity to post a brilliant cartoon by one of my heroes, New Yorker satirist/philosopher/humorist Charles Addams. If you read here often, you have seen his work highlighted periodically because it is so often appropriate. In this case, that cartoon above, which made me laugh out loud when I first saw it as a high school student, immediately leapt to mind when I read that Kaufman believes the little white figures in the “walk/don’t walk” traffic lights represent white people.

Did anyone, at the New Yorker, among its readers, among the millions of people who have seen that creepy but very funny drawing in the best-selling collections of Addams’ mordant humor think for a second that it had anything to do with race? No, because it didn’t, doesn’t, and until quite recently, before The Great Stupid spread hate, fear, darkness and toxic cretinism over the land, nobody would be so woke-mad and brainwashed to see racism in everything that they would come to such a bonkers conclusion. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Week: Victor Davis Hanson

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

“[W]hen everything becomes racist, then nothing in particular can be racist.”

—Revered conservative scholar and pundit Victor Davis Hanson in his column prompted by the absurd progressive calms that the beating death of young Tyre Nichols by five black police officers was caused by “white supremacy” and “systemic racism.”

Hanson’s piece “Race Everywhere” neatly supports my observation in the previous post that it is time to retire February ‘s designation as “Black History Month” (though “Hot Breakfast Month” can stay). His thesis:

In sum, class, not race, remains the best litmus test of being underprivileged in America. It is no longer synonymous with race.  No wonder the identity politics industry now strains to attach prefixes such as “systemic” or “implicit” to “racism,” or “micro” to “aggression,” purportedly to ferret out bias that otherwise is not apparent. Pause to reflect that America is the only successful multiracial constitutional republic in history.To survive in an increasingly dysfunctional and hostile world abroad, the unique idea of the United States requires concord.  But national cohesion is only possible through citizens subordinating their tribal interests to a common culture. Only then do they cease being automatons of warring tribes and collectives. 

Hanson includes many examples of the fact-immune push to elevate the black race above all others in the U.S. while deliberately reversing our national and societal progress away from segregation and racial hostility, as well as why the movement is neither rational nor responsible. Three that I was aware of include,

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Yet Another Explanation For The Tyre Nichols Police Attack That Doesn’t Involve “White Supremacy”…And It Is Very Much Based On Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Radlye Balko made a cogent and well-supported case that the horrible beating death of young hands Tyre Nichols at the hands of five ‘elite” black Memphis cops was the result of cities creating unaccountable special urban law enforcement teams that are negligently supervised, trained and selected. Now comes iconoclast sportswriter, podcaster and pundit Jason Whitlock, a co-founder of “Outkick,” to offer a more explosive, and unwelcome explanation (in the woke community at least):

[T]he five police officers mimicked gang behavior and that the whole sad event is a byproduct of communities overrun with matriarchal values and controlled by single black mothers….the conversation we should be having in reaction to Tyre Nichols centers on the cost of destroying the black family.

…

Black urban areas are dominated by matriarchal rulership. It’s an utter failure and disaster. These areas all operate similar to Memphis. Crime is astronomical. Young men settle their differences with deadly violence. Academic performance hovers at record lows. Illegitimacy rates skyrocket.

Tyre Nichols was 29. The five police officers who participated in beating him to death range in age from 24 to 32. The behavior we witnessed from the officers resembles what happens when a group of Vice Lords catch a Gangster Disciple on their turf. The Disciple will flee. The Vice Lords will chase. Violence ensues.

My point is what we saw Friday night does not appear to be an outgrowth of bad policing. I’ve yet to see video evidence that depicts what caused the traffic stop and why Nichols had to be snatched from his car. It doesn’t feel like we’ve been shown the complete story. Something about the encounter feels far more personal than anything born of the frustration created by a resistant suspect. The use of pepper spray makes zero sense.

It feels like the outgrowth of a rotten culture, a culture where black men are canonized and celebrated for handling petty beefs and disrespect with lethal violence. That type of emotional violence is commonplace within zip codes dominated by the matriarchy.

Tyre Nichols cried out for his mama for a reason. I’m not saying that to belittle Nichols. I’m saying it’s a reflection of modern black culture, a culture that inappropriately places women at the top of the food chain. Mama is the ultimate authority and savior.

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Ethics Hero And 2022 Ethics Alarms Award For Most Ethical Website Of The Year: Legal Insurrection

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

The instances of schools and other institutions violating core American principles in pursuit of the correct radical woke agenda—which I would summarize as obliterating the unique ethical culture of the United States of America while an apathetic public shrugs with its metaphorical finger up its nose and the biased mainstream media provides cover—are proliferating with frightening speed. The only remedy is rapid action, exposure, and sufficient condemnation to make these dreadful revolutionaries back down and either give up or regroup, to be slapped down again another day. That was what Prof. William Jacobsen’s courageous blog Legal Insurrection did when the Providence, Rhode Island, Public School District attempted two measures that were discriminatory—you know, the “good” kind of discrimination.

The District tried to inflict an “Educators of Color Meet Up” program in which white educators were excluded from attending by the explicit terms of the announcement and a sign up form that listed only non-white races and ethnicities. The Legal Insurrection Foundations sent a letter to the planned venue for the event, putting the owners on notice of the non-discrimination provisions of the Rhode Island Public Accommodations law. The school district moved its location and changed its sign up form and event description after being exposed,

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The Democrats’ “Leading Against White Supremacy Act”: So You Really Still Can’t Believe The Democratic Party Has Totalitarian Aspirations, Eh? [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Oh, I know what you’re going to say: “That’s unfair, Jack! You know that the wacko bill is the brainchild of Representative Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), and she’s not like most Democrats!” It is true that Lee, whose Ethics Alarms dossier is as damning as any one could find on a current member of Congress with the possible exception of Nancy Pelosi, is a particularly awful member of Congress. She’s a fanatic supporter of reparations for slavery; she’s a knee-jerk race-baiter (any criticism of President Barack Obama, a serial bungler, was racist in her view). She’s one of those not very bright people who speak assertively and defiantly because they are laboring under the delusion that they are intelligent, thus fooling others who aren’t very smart either.

Lee once mixed up Wikileaks and Wikipedia in an interview. She has complained that the naming of storms is racist, because the names are “too white,” but we know that if we gave hurricanes names like “LaShonda” to hurricanes, she’d complain that blacks were being deliberately compared to destructive forces.

Nonetheless, you watch: House Democrats will overwhelmingly support Lee’s Leading Against White Supremacy Act, maybe even unanimously, despite the fact that it is unconstitutional, an attack on free speech and thought, and designed to let the government criminalize political positions it doesn’t like.

They will vote for it in part because it has no chance of passing. They also assume that their constituency is so ignorant of our rights it will see Republican opposition as more proof of racism.

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KABOOM! I Just Read AGAIN The National Museum of African American History and Culture’s Website Section On “Whiteness”….How Can That Racist Offal Still Be Up? [Revised]

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

The official position of the Smithsonian Institution is apparently that white people are a blight on humanity. My head exploded after the first time I became aware of this, in a post that generated a lot of excellent comments in 2020. Like a fool, I assumed the outrageous text (and the chart that earlier post focused on) had been removed. I was wrong.

It’s time to revisit the issue, especially since my head just exploded again.

Here’s a sample of the woke, Black Lives Matter, Critical Race Theory, “1619”-style racist drivel (and libel) that appears on the website of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, the “Nation’s Attic’s” most recent major addition. I know most attics have creepy , smelly stuff in them, but this should not be tolerated.The page headlined, “Whiteness” reads in part,

Whiteness is also at the core of understanding race in America. Whiteness and the normalization of white racial identity throughout America’s history have created a culture where nonwhite persons are seen as inferior or abnormal.

This white-dominant culture also operates as a social mechanism that grants advantages to white people, since they can navigate society both by feeling normal and being viewed as normal. Persons who identify as white rarely have to think about their racial identity because they live within a culture where whiteness has been normalized. 

Thinking about race is very different for nonwhite persons living in America. People of color must always consider their racial identity, whatever the situation, due to the systemic and interpersonal racism that still exists.  

Whiteness (and its accepted normality) also exist as everyday microaggressions toward people of color. Acts of microaggressions include verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs or insults toward nonwhites. Whether intentional or not, these attitudes communicate hostile, derogatory, or harmful messages.

Since white people in America hold most of the political, institutional, and economic power, they receive advantages that nonwhite groups do not. These benefits and advantages, of varying degrees, are known as white privilege. For many white people, this can be hard to hear, understand, or accept – but it is true. If you are white in America, you have benefited from the color of your skin….

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A Black Columnist Employed By The Washington Post Just Revealed Herself As Not Only A Racist, But An Especially Incompetent One….Now What?

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

It is seldom that a writer for a prestigious publication spontaneously performs the equivalent of placing a neon “I am a racist moron who should never be taken seriously again!” sign on her head, but that’s what Karen Attiah has done. She’s a columnist for The Washington Post “on issues relating to race, gender and international politics, with a special interest in Africa”—naturally, she minored in Black Studies at Columbia, giving her anti-white racist urges just the boost they needed. One benefit of the disastrous Martin Luther King memorial unveiled this week in Boston is that it has caused lots of pundits, critics and others to reveal things about themselves (hypocrisy, bad taste) that the public needs to know—in Attiah’s case, that she is afflicted by the worst kind of racist hate and paranoia.

Attiah launched into a Twitter rant this week about how the “Embrace” sculpture (above) is a perfect example of how evil whites still distort the legacy of Dr. King as part of the structural racism and vile white supremacy America thrives on…

Boston’s Embrace statue perfectly represents how White America loves to butcher MLK. Cherry-picking quotes about love and non-violence. While ignoring his radicalism, anti-capitalism, his fierce critiques of white moderates. MLK- in his fullness– is still too much for them...And yes, I’ll say it. From another angle, the statue for real looks like one person is performing disembodied oral sex. No matter how much I try, I can’t unsee it. I don’t think MLK would have wanted us to be thinking about cunnilingus on his birthday. Thanks, Boston.…There is nothing radical about the disembodied, de-racialized Embrace statue. It is sending a whitewashed, multi-million dollar message — that MLK and Coretta overcame structural racism and systematic injustice with love– interpersonal, colorblind love….Anyway, since the statue has been revealed, have we been talking about it, or MLK? No. We’ve been talking all weekend about horribly racist/ anti-Black Boston has been– and continues to be. Mission accomplished…? This is what happens when white America tries to grossly distort what MLK really stood for… and ultimately.. what they murdered him for. In making MLK a whitewashed symbol of love, the Embrace statue is both safe AND grotesque. Says little about the man, a lot about America….To have a dismembered statue of a Black man and woman, in a country that killed and destroyed so many Black people, will never sit right with me. MLK Jr. was also murdered by white America. It’s giving -“We are so grateful for Black people’s noble sacrifice” – energy.

Oops! Here’s that virulent white supremacist artist who created “Embrace”:

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